The subject matter disclosed herein relates to circuit breakers. More particularly, to a test assembly used to test a tripping mechanism of a circuit breaker.
Circuit breakers provide overcurrent and short circuit protection & ground fault protection for electric power systems. A tripping mechanism is used to open separable contacts of the circuit breaker to interrupt current flow in a protected power system. In order to ensure the safe operation of circuit breakers, testing is performed periodically. Thus, circuit breakers are provided with a test button, by means of which it is possible to release the circuit breaker, in order to check the correct operation of the circuit breaker.
Circuit breakers generally are designed to minimize space therein. As such, contacts for testing ground fault and arc fault circuitry typically have been mounted directly onto a printed circuit board (PCB) of the circuit breaker. The contacts may be leaf springs that protrude from the PCB and are deflected into contact with one another in order to close the ground fault or arc fault protection circuit. There are several problems associated with the use of leaf spring contacts. For example, since such contacts are disposed internally within the circuit breaker, some type of linkage must be provided which operatively extends between the contacts and the exterior of the circuit breaker to permit the contacts to be closed from the exterior of the circuit breaker. Therefore, the use of the leaf springs may take up additional space within the circuit breaker and may be relatively expensive to incorporate into a circuit breaker.
It is thus desired to provide an improved test assembly for a circuit breaker that overcomes these and other shortcomings of the conventional test button.